PrintSupporting Efforts to Resolve Border Issues
USIP is working in the volatile border areas between North and South Sudan to help build conflict management capacity, advise on the Popular Consultation process in Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan states, and support innovative projects that contribute to security, development and streghtening inter-group relationships.
Building Local Conflict Management Capacity in the “Three Areas”
In the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed in January of 2005, the "Three Areas" of Sudan—Abyei, Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile—were set aside for special treatment, in part because they can be particularly volatile and contentious. USIP conducts capacity-building workshops to help manage and prevent violent conflict in the Three Areas, which could increase at the referenda approach.
Popular Consultation in Sudan
USIP is working with state officials, political leaders and civil society members from Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan states to design and conduct Popular Consultation - a CPA-mandated process whereby the two states can seek to renegotiate political, administrative, and constitutional arrangements with the central government.
Sudan Priority Grant Program North-South Border Initiative
Regardless of the outcome of the referenda processes, sources of instability created by Sudan’s North-South Border have the capacity to both increase insecurity and threaten development in the border areas as well as spark conflict at the national and even international level. The North-South Border Initiative (NSBI) will support innovative projects from the grass roots to the policy level that promote the establishment of a border that contributes to, instead of hinders, security, development, and the strengthening of inter-group relationships in the border areas commonly known as Tamazuj (Arabic for inter-mingling).